I'd just set out to start creating a tutorial on modifying the forum.css to create new color schemes when I found that user WITCH had already done precisely that in a detailed and specific post at piasa.info.

This excellent tutorial will show beginners in detail which parameters in forum.css affect which page elements.

Please note that you can not simply change forum.css and expect the changes to remain intact after rebuilding your theme from the theme manager. You must modify in your fudforum data directory a file called thm/<template name>/tmpl/forum.css.tmpl

There's a new resource on the Wiki for those interested in exploring color in their FUDforum themes. The FUDStyler utility lets you experiment with colors dynamically on a mockup of the forum interface so you can watch which page elements are affected by your changes. You can copy the color codes into the indicated locations in your own theme (note Marticus' additional info above).

Enjoy, and thanks to whoever built this valuable resource (Frank? That you? )

I had a chance to play with it a bit finally, and its still out of my grasp, but I did find that I can save the FUDstyler icon as a shortcut link to my desk top, which makes it handy.
And it's a whole lot easier than chasing colors and changes with note pad and firebug.

another thing that would be nice is a list or picture of what each section / group of images/ css / etc. is available and what it corresponds to in the forum look. For instance, I feel I'd like to have more space in the text showing the path to current forum and the SHOW options. Where is that? Or adding a bit more padding here and there to make my forum feel a bit less cramped. Currently I have to use browser tools to locate the div etc. for what I'd like to modify, then grep all the php files hoping to find a match in one of them. It takes a lot of time to do anything dealing with overall look and feel.